Monday, November 28, 2005

On growing up with incipient queerness in the 'burbs, post New-Wave, pre-'Net

Every once in a while little jolts will come back to me, like somekind of cheezy, noxious Proustian trip--poisonous green Lick 'Em Aidpowder and warm Coke instead of the madeleines in lime-flower tea.

I remember selling bags of candy, including aforementioned greenpowder, for the "thespian" group (har har HAR har, snerk), and now I'mthinking: how fucked up was that, that even the damn drama club had noidentifiable drama fags, much less dykes? Oh, our teacher was aclassic, all right: Mr. F--, and he meant every sibilant syllable ofit. He was also an utter tool. The annual school play was invariablysomething like "Winne the Pooh" or "Alice in Wonderland." I was acard, one year, for the latter. Big, unwieldy cardboardcostume in which I had to maneuver out onto a second-story catwalk,with no lights. My fellow "card" was a freckly girl who admired myonyx necklace, which she insisted was called "oinks." it's "onyx," Isaid. no, she said, it's OINKS.

I was never publicly identified as queer, at least to my knowledge,but I was already well-trained to act like a hunted rabbit by years ofoutcast "nerd" status: newfound sapphic feelings were just icing on thecake, really. Funnily enough, I don't think girls ever *were* called"dykes," or rarely, even if they were noticably butch. Oh, there werethe odd locker room harassment moments, of course. ("Hey, me and myfriend were wondering why you never say hello." "Yeah, it really hurtsmy feelings. Why are you so unfriendly?" "She likes you. You'rehurting her feelings by not saying hello. She loves you; she's a lez! Har, HAR!")

Still, I don't remember any girl being *seriously* considered queer;possibly, like Queen Victoria, my classmates didn't think they reallyexisted. "Two women?" said one guy in my "thespian" troupe, apropos ofI don't remember what. "Wow!" "Leslie," I believe his name was. Or:"So who do you like?" I was asked by one perky female classmate. "Aguy? No [answering herself, with a "duh" implication]--a girl! No,really, who do you like?"

On the other hand, the boys scrupulously policed each other for theslightest signs of deviance. A lavender T-shirt could earn derisionfor the rest of the week; one kid, already unpopular but neverparticularly tarred "gay" before, dressed in drag one Halloween andspent the rest of the year, at least, trying, unsuccessfully, to liveit down. The ribbing was not good-natured. Hell, even the girlssometimes commented about (themselves) appearing too "faggy." Anyway,you were a lot more popular if you played sports and could run with theboys, no matter which gender you were.

I was friends, at least for a while, with the designated fag: aslight, pale, giggly, tiptoeing, fluttery-wristed, even (yes) lispingaficianado of scarves, gymnastics, and Bette Midler, with the veryunfortunate name of Richard (Dick) Stone. I met Richard in seventhgrade; he'd not yet hit puberty, and yet already had a years-longhistory of being hounded mercilessly as a faggot. It's quite possiblethat he first found out what "gay" meant from sneering classmates, longbefore any actual homoerotic feelings. We never discussed this,anyway; from day one until the day we graduated, his theme remainedstubbornly that they all just thought he was gay (said with a roll ofthe eyes) because he'd done gymnastics. Which really didn't make onegay at all, you know. Not, he would hasten to add, that there wasanything wrong with, you know, being that way. Followed by extremelyunconvincing description of his last date with his "girlfriend," and/orporing over the illustrations in a male fashion magazine ("I reallylike that hairdo...and that jacket...I think it'd look good on me,don't you?") with a kind of taut, crackling, breathless tension thatwas all too familiar to me from similar sessions with Cosmo. But Inever said anything. I doubt he would have wanted to hear it even ifI'd been capable.

The "oinks" part of this post was especially delectable. Anytime you can seamlessly work some sort of porcine term (that's my new favorite word: porcine) into a queer identity narrative, you've done right by the universe.

BTW, if I ever get my blogroll back up, you'll be on it again. Half of what you write drives me nucking futs, and the other half makes we want to screamingly cheer you from my humble rooftop. As I believe I said at ISTM, I need a diet of regular feminist contradiction to keep me toned, and your words are nothing if not, er, fibrous in all the most essential ways.

Hey, VM, I saw your comment come through via email and was wondering where the hell it went. the "oinks" tipped me off.

that's (one of the many) trouble(s) with blogger; they let you know when you get a new comment but they don't say -where.- if it's on the front page it's pretty obvious, but if not...looks like i missed badgerbag too, a while ago. which, to answer: no, no i haven't. i could try, but he's got a really common last name and i pretty much lost track of him after high school. although i -thought- i saw him working at Nordstrom's once, but that was a really long time ago.

anyway, cheers, VM, heh. now i'm wondering which half was which. funny, i was just thinking about you as well as someone else who just popped up on my board this morning after a long while; i was gonna go around to both of yer blogs, but hadn't yet gotten there. wooo.

if you're spelunking the archives, i've probably changed my mind on a few things since the earliest days.